Re: problems with the concept of unstable -> testing
Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
> Didier Raboud wrote:
>> Yes. But there is a bunch of non-DD people that strongly want to use
>> Debian and prefer the recent software over the stabilized one.
>
> These are called 'users of unstable' or 'users of testing'.
Fair enough.
>> With the new
>> laptops coming out every two weeks, having the latest kernel, Xorg or hal
>> is no caprice, it's needed 
>
> I think that the three existing flavours of debian already provide more
> than is needed to offer comfort for both users with stability needs and
> users with desire for new software.
Actually, I would agree if you consider the 4th flavour: experimental.
Just to name some important ones which are only there: OpenOffice.org,
amarok, openjdk, vlc, wine, samba. The list is ever-growing (during the
freeze).
Having the latest OO.o is more than confort…
> At the times of a freeze, I guess the available resources would be
> better spent on trying to keep that time as short as possible, instead
> of having to explain to users that there is one more section that they
> could use in their sources.list.
I don't think that it only helps geeky users ot have "one more section". My
guess is that it'll help "keeping the fun" for the Developers as well…
> It would be great, if the remaining RC bugs were solved faster so that
> lenny could be released sooner, allowing newer versions in squeeze
> faster, allowing earlier testing of newer software, speeding up the
> release of squeeze, leading....
I agree that with a shorter freeze it would solve it all. Just don't forget
that the amount of packages is growing faster than the number of workers
(DD's) [not counting how many users flew to Ubuntu and that don't report
and fix in Debian…].
So, the potential source of bugs is becoming bigger, while the forces to
solve the issues is not (at least not fast enough). Thus the bigger freeze
time.
Another solution would be to reduce the number of packages, but this is
reducing the fun (and the _universal_ity) too…
>> With a less jungle experimental which you could trust as the unfrozen
>> unstable or with a constantly unfrozen unstable, this would not be an
>> issue.
>
> With a faster fixing of RC bugs and a faster release, all this would not
> be an issue.
Agreed.
But fixing RC bugs faster is not possible. You can't ask people to work more
than their "fun threshold".
And with the low rate of new DD's compared to the high rate of new upstreams
and ITP's and so the growing rate of new packages, and so the rate of bugs,
I think that reducing the freeze time is not possible.
So there is a need for something else.
> Cheers,
>
> Johannes
>
> - -- speaking as a user, who believes that debian's way is close to
> perfect for _both_ stability and new software.
>
> Thanks to all for their great work!
Regards,
OdyX
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